User Agent and Assistive Technology Support Notes

Current user agents and assistive technology provide no feedback to the user
when links have title attribute content available.

Some graphical user agents will display a tool tip when the mouse hovers above
an anchor element containing a title attribute. However, current user
agents do not provide access to title attribute content via the
keyboard.

The tool tip in some common user agents disappears after a short period of time
(approximately 5 seconds). This can cause difficulty accessing title
attribute content for those users who can use a mouse but have fine motor skill
impairment, and may result in difficulties for users who need more time to read
the tool tip.

Current graphical user agents do not provide mechanisms to control the
presentation of title attribute content. The user cannot resize the
tool tip text or control the foreground and background colors. The placement and
location of the tool tip cannot be controlled by users, causing some screen
magnifier users to be unable to access meaningful portions of the
title attribute content because the tool tip cannot be fully
displayed within the viewport.

Some user agents allow access to supplementary information through the context
menu. For example, the keystroke combination Shift+F10 followed by P will display
the title attribute content, along with other supplementary
information in Mozilla/Firefox.

The HTML 4.01 specification explains that the text of the alt
attribute is to be displayed when the element cannot be rendered normally. Thus,
visual User Agents will display the alt attribute text when images
are not displayed. The title attribute is meant to provide additional
information. User Agents generally will display the title attribute
text when the mouse is placed over the element containing the title
attribute. Internet Explorer will display the alt text on mouse-over
if there is no title text. The Firefox and Opera browsers only
display the title text on mouse-over and do not use the
alt attribute text for this purpose.

Assistive technologies provide different levels of support for speaking title attributes. Some do not include features that allow users to access information provided via the title attribute.

JAWS 7.0 and above will speak the value of title attributes depending upon a JAWS setting. This setting can be changed temporarily or permanently within JAWS.

WindowEyes 5.5 and above has a hot key, ins-E, that will speak additional information, including the title attribute, for the item with focus.

Implementing this technique with the title attribute is only sufficient if the title attribute is accessibility supported. If the value of the title is essential to understanding the purpose of the link for all users, then the content of this attribute needs to be available to all keyboard users (not only those with text-to-speech software) for this technique to be accessibility supported.

Description

The objective of this technique is to demonstrate how to use a title
attribute on an anchor element to provide additional text describing a link. The
title attribute is used to provide additional information to help clarify
or further describe the purpose of a link. If the supplementary information provided
through the title attribute is something the user should know before
following the link, such as a warning, then it should be provided in the link text
rather than in the title attribute.

Example 1: Clarifying the purpose of a link

Example 2: A link that opens in a new window

In HTML 4.01 the
target="_blank" attribute can be used on an anchor
element to indicate that the URI specified by the href attribute will be opened in a
new window. This example shows using the title attribute of the anchor
element to provide information that the link will be opened in a new window.

Related Techniques

Tests

Procedure

For each anchor element that has a title attribute, check that the
title attribute together with the link text describes the purpose
of the link.

Expected Results

Check #1 is true.

If this is a sufficient technique for a success criterion, failing this test procedure does not necessarily mean that the success criterion has not been satisfied in some other way, only that this technique has not been successfully implemented and can not be used to claim conformance.